Cradle and All
by AshenMoon42
Summary: In an attempt to return the baby left on her doorstep, Petunia faces the wreckage.


**CRADLE AND ALL**

**.**

**Written for ROUND ONE of the International Wizarding Schools Championship. **

**School and Theme: Beauxbatons / Godric's Hollow**

**Special Rule: Petunia/Vernon (pairing I have not written before)**

**Main Prompt: [object] an infant's crib**

**Additional Prompts: [colour] emerald green, [emotion] déjà vu**

**Year: 7**

**Wordcount (including A/N): 3,371**

**.**

She finds it by the milk crates.

It's a Sunday. Autumn has fallen over Surrey, and Petunia Dursley thinks that they need to brush back those leaves again because the next-door neighbour's garden is looking nearly as neat as theirs and that simply won't do. Lost in her own head, she bends to pick up the crate, her eyes following a few seconds after.

Petunia screams before covering her mouth with a shaking hand (She doesn't want to disturb the neighbours.).

Beside the crate is a bundle of green blankets, and as she stares, a wail stems from inside.

She picks up the milk, walks inside, shutting the door behind her, and goes into the kitchen. Open the fridge, close the fridge, breathe. Raising her eyes to fix on the now-closed front door, she yells: "Vernon!"

Movement from upstairs. "What?"

"Come … come downstairs."

He's clearly shifting his weight as the ceiling creaks.

Leaning back against the sideboard, she holds a clenched fist to her forehead and presses her head into it. Eyes still fixed on the door, she doesn't dare even blink.

The tell-tale creaks of the stairs and Vernon is down, confusion riddling his features, furrowing his brow. "What is it, Pet?"

Breathe. "There's a baby on our doorstep."

He frowns, wrapping a thick arm around her shoulders. "Not possible, dear. Dudley's sleeping soundly upstairs."

"There is a baby on our doorstep, Vernon. And it is not ours."

Without awaiting his reply, she strides towards the door and yanks it open again.

"There," she says, without even glancing downwards. "There, look. I'm not delirious, am I? There's a baby."

He opens his mouth and squints his eyes and raises a meaty fist to the doorframe. "So there is."

And he is done reacting because Vernon is steady and strong and he always will be.

"What are we going to do with it?"

Neither of them has an answer to that, so they take it inside and put it on the table, and Petunia snatches the letter from the folds of its blanket.

As soon as she sees the curling emerald ink, she knows, but she reads it through anyway and a second time for good measure. Then she says: "Excuse me," and walks out, taking the letter with her.

Vernon doesn't follow her, and for that she is grateful. He always knows what to do. She is alone in the bathroom with this blasted piece of parchment, and she curls up, folding into herself, head bowed over her knees.

Raising a hand to brush back a wave of tears from her cheeks, she wonders when she started crying. Briefly, she hopes Vernon didn't see.

When her legs feel like they can hold her, she stands and looks in the mirror. Petunia's hair hangs limp like a flag in the rain, or like the drooping petals of the flowers in Mum's garden when she became too old to tend to them. Her mascara runs down her face and is smudged like a raincloud under each eye. Her eyes themselves, she notices, are nearly as blue as Lily's were green, a fact which only makes the tears come faster. It was something her mother had constantly said.

They'd played together before Hogwarts. Princesses and fairies and knights in shining armour.

A sob builds in her throat. Still shaking, she clutches the letter in her limp hands and rips it once, twice, three times, then casts it into the toilet bowl and flushes it down. The green ink runs into the water, and Petunia thinks of the magical potions Lily once described to her. This would be a _draught of grief_ or suchlike. The thought doesn't have time to linger.

She wipes the tears from her face, flushes the loo once more for luck, and strides out.

Vernon looks up as she enters. "I'm taking it back," she announces. "I'll go to the headmaster of that freak school and give it back to him."

Two days later, she's found the time to sit and prepare. The freak school is in Scotland, and she's never been a confident driver, so she brings out the OS map and looks for Godric's Hollow. It's the name of the village on the glittering invite from Lily's wedding that she had left to rot in the attic. She told Lily the letter had been lost, and Lily had said, "_Oh, I knew we shouldn't have used the Muggle post. Awfully unreliable, isn't it?" _(as if she hadn't once been part of this world) and James had nodded from beside her, that stupid, stupid grin on his face, and Petunia had swallowed before telling them she was busy right now, wishing them luck in their new marriage, and sending them on their way.

Now, she wishes she'd gone, if only to see Lily's smile. She wishes she'd seen Lily one more time.

It's in the West Country, and though Petunia doesn't particularly want to drive all that way, it's undoubtedly better than Scotland. Better weather, too.

She tells Vernon he can look after Dudley on Friday, can't he? Because he's off work, isn't he? He nods and goes back to his soap on the telly.

Until then, they can feed the baby and dress it in Dudley's old clothes (because this baby is a lot smaller than her own son—it is a month younger after all) and it can stay in a basket under the stairs or something. There, at least they won't hear it crying. There, it's like the baby doesn't exist.

Until Friday, Petunia pretends it's not there. She changes its nappy and gives it ASDA's cheapest baby food and then leaves it in that dusty little room and forgets all about it.

She doesn't feel guilty about the state of the room or the fact that she can hear its muffled wails or that its nappy isn't changed nearly enough. Of course she doesn't.

She looks after Dudley and feeds him the Waitrose food, and runs her finger every so often across the OS map, absentmindedly tracing the roads she will take.

_Friday_, she tells herself. _Friday and everything will go back to normal, and the baby will be gone._

She knows its name, but she doesn't use it because that would be acknowledging it as a human being and it's _not_, of course; it's a freak, like its mother and father, and Petunia knows now what happens if you get too attached to things like that. Magic took away her sister. She will not allow it to take anything else.

When Friday finally comes, Petunia kisses Vernon goodbye and proceeds to spend the car journey gripping the wheel with both hands, looking down at the baby whenever there's a straight stretch of road.

It's got emerald eyes, like her sister's. Its mop of hair is messy and black like his—_its_—father's. Eyeing the scar that mars its forehead, she winces. She'd always known those magic fools couldn't mind a child properly.

It showers on-and-off. Dorset is only two hours away, but it seems like days pass in that little metal box, the engine stuttering, the baby sleeping, the rain pounding every now and again on the windscreen. She stops off halfway in a layby to consult the map.

Petunia looks at the baby—baby Harry—again and sighs because this is all that is left of beautiful Lily (the princess, the fairy, the witch).

She drives on.

Petunia parks the car in the pub car park.

Godric's Hollow. The rain stopped an hour ago, and the pavement shines with silver puddles. She climbs out of the car and stretches before walking around the car and taking the baby from the passenger side.

It's a small village —a corner shop and a post office, a church and a pub. In the centre of the village square is a statue Petunia finds herself unable to see clearly. It's a war memorial, she thinks. Very recent, but when was the last time Britain was at war at such a scale that an insignificant village like this would lose so many? She shakes her head, looks away, and promptly forgets about it. She's very good at that.

The cottages, fanning away from the village square, are quaint and look rather difficult to manage. The windows are more draughty than the ones the modern houses in Little Whinging have, and look at the state of that wall—is that damp creeping 'round the edge of that beam? She shivers at the thought of village life.

The baby shifts in her arms and she adjusts its blankets (the same she found it in—she will not give up one of Dudley's blankets for the freaks that got her sister killed) as she walks. She's not sure where she's going, because she was silly enough to forget the exact address, leaving that invitation on the kitchen table in her haste to get rid of the baby. She supposes, from the description of the death, that it will be obvious. The house will be green, or exploded, or glowing with divine light.

She walks to the end of a lane and has to wind her scarf tighter around her neck because November has hit Dorset hard, and the cold bites.

Behind her, the bells of the chapel toll like the groans of the dying.

She sees the house as she turns the corner, a house like any other, with those beautiful old beams on every wall and diamond-paned windows. The door, however, is hanging on its hinges, and the top floor lies open to the elements, the thatch burnt off of the roof to reveal scarred eaves. The wall facing the lane has fallen in. Petunia stares, and for a moment she imagines Lily standing inside that wreck of a house, facing down some fearsome monster, wand in hand, red hair flying around her face and emerald eyes blazing.

She blinks and Lily is gone.

_Godric's Hollow_. Petunia doesn't know what Godric means, but the place certainly feels hollow. Of the house, only the bones remain, the skin torn from the bleeding carcass, the innards blasted into oblivion. And Lily is gone.

She's getting a feeling of déjà vu, standing here on the pavement. Only four years ago, she and Lily had stood before their parents' house (which was not in the same sorry state, of course), and it had felt the same. Like the fundamental meaning of the place was gone, leaving a hole where the heart had been ripped out. But they had been together then and had walked through the garden side-by-side to look at the wilting lilies and petunias growing amongst each other, and though they had barely spoken, it had been the last time she had been with Lily properly; they'd been together and not across a room or arguing or leaving as soon as possible. And now Lily is gone.

She looks up at the tattered ruin, then spins on the spot to survey the rest of the street.

Across from the house is a copse of trees, and in the copse is a bench, and on the bench is a man. She reels back at the sight of him. He's a scarecrow of a man, his face a mottled canvas of scars and his clothes hanging off his thin frame. He must've been there for a while because his hair is wet though the rain stopped an hour ago.

"I don't bite," he says, as she stares, and his throat must be raw because his voice is like the scratch of stone-on-stone. He looks at her and emits a bitter laugh.

"What's so funny?" Petunia asks.

"Nothing," he spits, suddenly serious. "Nothing at all."

She stops herself from taking another step back.

Then he sees the baby. "Is that…?"

"What?" she snaps, drawing the bundle tight to her chest to get it away from this man with skeleton fingers.

"Are you … you're Petunia, aren't you? We met once, you know." His voice has turned soft.

"I'd appreciate if you called me Mrs Dursley."

"Oh, of course. You married that Muggle man, didn't you? Dursley."

She stands awkwardly, quite sure she has never seen this man in her life. And she hates the word _Muggle_. Lily had explained it to her, all that time ago, and she _hates_ it, hates it so much.

"I am a Muggle," she bites back at him.

"I know."

She swallows, nearly turns back but knows she can't. Somehow, she can't leave Godric's Hollow quite yet. "Who … who are you?"

"I knocked on your door once. To see Lily. I was fifteen. You answered the door."

She frowns.

"And again a year later. I brought James with me because he and Lily were friends by then. You loathed him."

Looking down at her feet, she says, "I never loathed him."

The man is silent.

"Can I sit?"

He nods, shuffling up to provide her space. She doesn't know why she wants to talk to this man, but he knew Lily and that's all she needs now.

She holds out the baby to him. "Take him."

His eyes widen, looking for all the world like a deer in the headlights, about to be hit. "I can't."

"_Why_? I don't want him! He's … he's all wrong. He's a _freak_, like Lily, and I can't … he could … I'm busy enough with my own son, you know? I can't deal with an orphan as well. You … you knew Lily and her husband. You know magic, you can—"

"No."

"No? Whyever not?"

"I am sick, Mrs Dursley."

She inches away, not wanting to touch his shabby clothes, his scarred skin.

"I am sick, and I am dangerous, and not in the right state of mind to care for a child."

"Neither am I!"

"Last week, I had four friends. Today I have none." He seems hollow. His last word is uttered like a curse.

Opposite, the house looms, the memory of a family gone up in smoke and flame and a flash of vivid light.

"Two of my friends were murdered, betrayed by a third. The fourth died the next morning, killed by the third. The third himself was … he was everything to me. And he can no longer be anything, after what he's done. I doubt he'll ever see the light of day again, locked away in a prison in the middle of the North Sea, guarded by demons you cannot even imagine." His eyes, she notices, are golden. "I am not the man you want to bring up your nephew, Mrs Dursley." And he says everything with a perfectly flat voice, with a perfectly blank face, and Petunia focuses on the scar that cuts through the corner of his lip so as not to meet his eyes.

"What do I do?"

"Keep him, Mrs Dursley. Cherish him."

Tightening her lips, she doesn't reply.

"You won't see the house next time. They'll be warding it against Muggles soon."

She swallows. "How inconsiderate," she snaps, because there's nothing else to say.

They sit in silence for a moment before she huffs and stands up. "I would say it was a pleasure to meet you, but…" She shrugs and walks away. The man, she imagines, slumps back in the bench and goes back to staring at the wreck of a house.

She has never known somebody to be so broken.

Before she leaves, she sighs, steeling herself for what she knows she has to do next. She's reluctant to do it under the watchful gaze of the scarecrow man, but there is no other way to do it, and what does he know anyway? He will be dead by next month; she guesses from the look of him. She certainly hopes she hasn't caught whatever awful sickness he's got.

The gate is green. Why does everything have to be so? Petunia had begun to resent that colour, ever since people had started noticing Lily, remarking on her beautiful eyes, observing nothing of Petunia's own. The green of the ink of that Hogwarts letter that had prompted her sister to fly away from her. The green of Harry's eyes, the green of magical potions and magical spells and a witch's skin. Green is everything Lily had had that Petunia didn't. Even the grass seems to mock her in its emerald shade, as her own life remains greyer than ever. Sometimes she detests her own monochrome life.

A sign pops up as she walks through, appearing as if by magic. She doesn't read it. The little path is worn but well-kept. The leaves are brushed back from the stones, as if Lily's spirit lives on, still caring for this home, for this ruin.

The door is already open, swinging off broken hinges, and Petunia has to duck through the low entrance, shielding Harry in her arms.

She barely looks downstairs at all, but the rooms seem untouched. Petunia can almost imagine that Lily's gone down the road for a pint of milk. She'll be back any minute, gorgeous rust-red hair and emerald eyes and radiant smile. She'll be back to collect her baby, and it'll all be a foolish joke. Potter had enjoyed jokes. He had played a horrible prank on Vernon when they met.

She shakes it off and goes directly to the stairs. They creak as she ascends.

The uppermost floor is a gaping hole. Unlike the untouched downstairs, everything has been blown back to the corners of the room, and objects lie about the place charred and cracked and broken. The only intact object sits at the end of the room, an infant's crib, carved from the most lovely unblemished wood.

She doesn't know why, but she puts Harry in it immediately. It's where he belongs, isn't it?

(Perhaps she can leave him there.)

From the corner of her eye, she can see a phantom of Lily standing before that crib, sheltering her son from the monster.

Once more, she blinks. The vision disintegrates.

She lays her hands on the crib and can feel a thrum of magic in the wood itself. Even as a Muggle, she can discern something, a warmth that reaches her heart before stuttering out like a blown-out candle. Harry rolls over in his slumber.

Her mother used to sing _rock-a-bye baby_ to the two of them. Lily had always cried when the baby fell.

And she always said, as her tears dried, "_Can't someone catch it? Surely it's not all alone out there_."

At this, Petunia, all of a sudden, snatches Harry back from the crib and holds him in her arms. She will not hand this baby to Dumbledore. He is the man who has taken everything from her. He had taken Lily when she was eleven, and then he had taken her again her when she left school, and now it is his fault she is dead, for taking her into this stupid wizarding war of his. Petunia will not let Dumbledore have a single remaining piece of Lily Evans, and that includes this emerald-eyed baby. The old man will not damage another Evans. Harry will not go to that freak school and he will not go to war and he will not be anything other than perfectly normal. She will stamp the magic out of him if she must, if only to keep Lily Evans alive inside him.

(Because she is there, inside. Her emerald green eyes are his too.)

And if he turns out like her sister did, Petunia will never forgive herself.

When she gets home, she puts Harry back under the stairs, and that night she sobs into Vernon's chest. He may not be dashing and rich and magical like James Potter, but he is stable, and he is _there_, and there is no chance that he will go and get her killed.


End file.
